LOS ANGELES — Steven Spielberg isn’t planning to make any more Holocaust movies.

The Oscar-winning director is leaving that to the Shoah Foundation.

After
Schindler’s List, Spielberg turned his lens on survivors of the World War II Jewish
genocide through his foundation, which has since filmed almost 52,000 testimonies from Holocaust
survivors worldwide.

As the organization turns 20, it has expanded its mission to include interviews with survivors
of other genocides, including those in Armenia, Cambodia and Rwanda.

Spielberg was inspired to create the foundation after meeting so many Holocaust survivors while
making
Schindler’s List, which tells the true story of a German businessman who used his Nazi
ties to rescue 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust.

The film’s greatest legacy isn’t its seven Academy Awards, $300 million in worldwide box-office
sales or even its message of humanity, said the 67-year-old, but the ongoing work of the Shoah
Foundation.

“It literally popped into my head on the drive back to my house in Krakow (Poland) after a day
of shooting the film that if
Schindler’s List had any success at all, the success would not be a monetary, commercial
one, but the success would be that this film would open a door for me to start taking as many
testimonies as humanly possible,” Spielberg said recently on behalf of the organization, now known
as USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education.

He also wrote the introduction for a book commemorating its 20th anniversary,
Testimony: The Legacy of Schindler’s List and the USC Shoah Foundation (Newmarket for It
Books, $50), to be released on Tuesday.

“I’m very proud of this legacy,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world.”

Spielberg stays close to the organization.

“I’m basically like a doctor on call,” he said. “I have everything but a beeper on my belt. When
they need me, I’m there.”

When he started the foundation in 1994, he just wanted to collect survivor testimonies to help
silence Holocaust deniers who had popped up during the making of
Schindler’s List. He never expected to get almost 51,413 accounts in 34 languages from 58
countries.

Said Shoah’s executive director, Stephen D. Smith: “Steven Spielberg is the only person I know
who had both the integrity and the vision to do it.”

As the collection grew, the foundation incorporated education and outreach. The digital archive
is searchable down to the name, date, location and specific keyword. Spielberg also visits schools
to talk about the survivor testimonies, although he admits that students are more interested in
discussing
E.T. and the
Indiana Jones films.

“They want to talk about the movies first,” Spielberg said, “and we have a really nice
conversation about the movies, and then we go right into this.”